The Iowa State athletic department has a new deal...for $99 you can get Cyclone tickets to games against Iowa, North Dakota State, and Colorado. This is much less desperate than the Applebees mini pack from last year. Just the rivalry game was priced at $92. So that makes the North Dakota State and Colorado games $3.50 a piece. I don't think it gets much cheaper than that.
The mini game package is available because Iowa returned 1,200 tickets back to Iowa State. It's kind of surprising to me considering last year Kinnick was sold out for this game. Though, you can purchase tickets to games against Northwestern or Minnesota (much more important games) for only $52 dollars, so I can understand why Hawkeye fans didn't want to dish out the extra $40 to sit in Jack Trice Stadium.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts ticket sales and ultimately the gate receipt. Iowa and Iowa State have a deal that the visitor gets 20% of the revenue from this game. For last year's game, Iowa State got a check for $616,383.48. That's nearly twice as much than the $330,389 Iowa received for playing in Ames in 2007. I suspect that the pay check for Iowa this year will be even worse. What a bad deal Iowa got itself into. At least the contract is changing. I believe starting in 2013, the home team will get to keep the money from the ticket sales.